DNA test OKd for convict in '92 killing

NU group calls conviction shaky

May 19, 2004|By Douglas Holt, Tribune staff reporter.

Lake County prosecutors have agreed to allow new DNA testing for a man serving a life sentence for the 1992 murder of an 11-year-old girl who was killed while she was baby-sitting two children in Waukegan.

"The state's attorney's office of Lake County agrees to retesting of the items because we believe in justice and we believe in fairness," Assistant State's Atty. Michael Mermel said Tuesday.

Mermel, chief of the county's felony division, was confident about Juan Rivera's conviction for the murder of Holly Staker. The conviction is being challenged by Northwestern University's Center on Wrongful Convictions.

"We believe we've already convicted the guilty party. We're not looking for confirmation," said Mermel, who prosecuted Rivera in 1998.

In a motion filed in March to request DNA testing, Northwestern law professor Jane Raley said Rivera's conviction was shaky. No physical evidence tied him to the rape and murder; his confession was obtained after four days of near-constant interrogation; and hairs found on the girl's body did not match Rivera's, according to Raley's court filing.

Also, the witness who identified him as the assailant was 2 1/2 years old at the time of the crime and later recanted her testimony, according to the court record.

Mermel said Rivera told police details of the crime that only the killer could have known.

But the lack of physical evidence long has been troublesome in the case and was cited by jurors in 1998 as a key reason for a "tense situation" among them.

During 30 hours of deliberation before reaching the guilty verdict, the jury at one point wrote to the judge, "We have certain members of the jury that believe without physical evidence they cannot agree to a guilty verdict beyond a reasonable doubt."

DNA testing existed at the time of Rivera's conviction in 1993 and reconviction in 1998 after the Illinois Appellate Court ordered a retrial.

But the techniques used then are considered obsolete because they required relatively large amounts of tissue, blood or other items to test.

Newer methods can extract evidence from small, damaged or incomplete bits of DNA, according to court papers filed on behalf of Rivera.

Technicians collected more than 200 pieces of evidence from the crime scene, including 74 fingerprints; blood, semen, hair and tissue samples; and a knife thought to have been the murder weapon.

Flecks of blood found on a back door to the apartment where the killing occurred never have been tested, Raley said.

Details of who will conduct the testing, what will be tested and how it will be examined remain to be negotiated with prosecutors, she said. But she said Lake County officials "are being very reasonable."

Mermel said his office is not waiting for a judge's order to conduct the testing.

"We don't have to be pulled kicking and screaming to do what's right," he said. "We don't need a judge to order us to do that.

"If there's untested material that the defense would like retested in light of modern techniques and processes, we're all for that."

Holly Staker was raped and murdered on Aug. 17, 1992, while caring for the children of Dawn Engelbrecht in Waukegan.

When Engelbrecht returned home from work, she found her 5-year-old son locked out of the house and her 2-year-old daughter on a bed in the children's bedroom. Holly's body was behind a door.

Rivera was jailed for an unrelated crime after the murder. An investigation led police to interview him after another prisoner said he had made incriminating statements.

Rivera signed a confession, but his lawyers said in court papers that he had a "psychotic breakdown" after four days of "non-stop accusation."

A psychiatric nurse found Rivera banging his head against a wall and speaking incoherently.

He signed a confession, but "because Rivera's statement did not comport with known facts of the case," a new statement was prepared, Raley's court filing said. Rivera also signed that statement.